


matches

by lisbethsalamanders



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Drama & Romance, F/F, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 06:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19941784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisbethsalamanders/pseuds/lisbethsalamanders
Summary: Cam/Donna soulmark/mate AU set during the run of the show (with a tiny bit before and after)."She loves hers, too. It makes her think of the ocean, of faraway lands she’d travel to with her soulmate, her match, the one other person on earth with a navy blue anchor beneath their right breast. Her mother teases her about it, how some dashing sailor would scoop her up and take her far away from arid Dallas. She secretly hopes one will."





	matches

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to a piece that has been marinating in a pocket of my brain since before the finale!!!!!!!! It went through a hundred different tones and iterations and ideas before I finally made myself settle down and choose something, and here we finally are. God, this feels good to let go of. 
> 
> I would apologize for the UTTER CHEEEEEEEESE that is some of this (I mean, I made the mark an anchor, hello) but I don't feel the tiniest bit bad about it. I will apologize for some real sad bits that I almost didn't put in but loved too much to leave out. 
> 
> So enjoy, those of us out there who still live for these two/this show. I love you all endlessly. You're my last and best partners.

Donna knows from an early age how lucky she is. So many children around her have marks that the world can see and judge, and she is blessed with privacy. 

She loves hers, too. It makes her think of the ocean, of faraway lands she’d travel to with her soulmate, her match, the one other person on earth with a navy blue anchor beneath their right breast. Her mother teases her about it, how some dashing sailor would scoop her up and take her far away from arid Dallas. She secretly hopes one will.

Gordon’s mark is on his foot, of all places. It’s a strange, rectangular design in such a bright neon green that she can’t help but laugh at it. She doesn’t plan on getting married until she meets her soulmate, but then the pregnancy test comes back positive. Plus there’s that thing. That other thing that’s been inside of her since childhood. The one that makes her follow her female professor around like a puppy dog for an entire semester and forces her not to look when her roommate is changing. That’s not something she feels like thinking about.

Her parents pay for the wedding. She doesn’t tell them about their marks.

Donna is tired. All the time. Her work is unfulfilling and so, unfortunately, is her marriage. Her daughters are extraordinary, both developing such radically different but distinct personalities and interests. They’re the light in her exhausting world, the reason she only rarely considers leaving Gordon, so wrapped up in his own misery that he doesn’t notice hers. 

Things get worse and then better when the hurricane of Joe MacMillan whips into their world. He brings chaos and a brash young coder named Cameron, who Donna tries very hard to be repulsed by. She’s so many things Donna never considered a woman could get away with, but then she studies her code. There’s an overwhelming warmth and artistry beneath the bathroom sink bleached hair and military surplus clothes. Something lights inside Donna like a match and she remembers wanting more than Texas Instruments and her grandmother’s peach pie recipe. She wants to reach out to Cameron, tell her that although she was skeptical at first, her ideas will make something this world can’t even fathom for all its beauty. 

She tries, badly, in the lobby of a hotel in Las Vegas that November. She knows what happened as soon as Joe stomps back into the suite, and she runs for the elevator. She catches Cameron before she runs out the front, likely looking for a Greyhound back to Dallas. This was their fault, all of their faults, and Donna wants her to know that this isn’t a victory for her. There’ll be money and success and even a little notoriety, but who cares. She knows what it’s like to have a real, genuine idea, one that may really change things for the better, and then have it ripped out from under you. The moment she reaches Cameron and sees her tear-stained face, the words leave her. So she squeezes her tight, Cameron’s arms still locked to her sides, and then lets her run. But she can’t let her get far.

Cameron is, as expected, a terrible boss. She’s impractical, frustrating, ego-driven, immature. She makes Donna infuriated and Donna loves it. She loves this scrappy, hungry little company full of ideas and little know-how. They fight, pretty much constantly. But the kind of fighting that makes Lev grumble that they sound just like his parents. And they get things done. She’s more harried than she’s ever been, but she’s never had more fun. The match inside her, the one that’s getting harder and harder to ignore, is glowing.

It’s past 3AM and they’re both five beers in. They had talked about the day and the changes that still need to be made to Community and some ridiculous new game ideas, but as the beers pile up things get personal. Cameron asks Donna why she’s been here so late recently, why she’s been so reluctant to go home. 

“We’re on separate planets, me and Gordon. I’m doing exactly what he’s done so many times, working on something important to me, and he can’t seem to care. I’m tired of coming home from someplace I love and looking at his face.”

“Jesus. I guess marriage can be rough even if you’re married to your soulmate, huh?” 

Donna eyes Cameron. She’s lounging, legs spread and leaning back against the couch like a boy. Her shirt has holes that Donna wants to poke, wants to spread open, to peek at her ribs. “He’s not. We’re not.”

Cameron sinks into the couch, surprised, maybe a little embarrassed. “Shit, sorry. I just assumed since you guys had been together so long that you were.”

“Most people do and it’s easier not to correct them. But no.”

“Do you… I mean, are you interested in finding yours? I don’t even know if I believe in them, but with the way you talk about Gordon -”

She cuts Cameron off before she can insult Gordon too badly, a reflexive bit of protectiveness. “Maybe. I don’t know. To go looking for that person, to leave what I have behind and hope for the best, just seems like it’ll be disappointing.”

Cameron hums in agreement, but Donna can feel her eyes on her. Too much of her. “You know, I’ve never seen your… never mind.”

“Yeah. Never mind.”

Cameron looks at the floor and after a moment of silence, retreats into her room. Donna gets another beer.

California is a different sort of hot than Texas, like neon compared to stones in the desert. Donna loves it, loves the palm trees and how she’s close to the ocean now, like her mother predicted. She wishes with all her might that the rest of her life matched the weather. Instead she’s dealing with an increasingly resentful Gordon, a rapidly growing company that feels beyond her control, daughters who are becoming real human beings, and Cameron. 

Why did she think sharing a roof would be easy? She doesn’t clean up after herself and makes the most horrific concoctions in the microwave and is becoming _friends_ with _Gordon_. But that’s not the worst of it, not by any means.

She also walks through the house to the bedroom she shares with Joanie in nothing but a towel after a shower. She bumps Donna’s ankle with her foot when they’re watching TV. She falls asleep with her head on the kitchen counter, papers everywhere. She slides on socked feet through the house, music blasting from her headphones. She’s wonderful. Donna’s in agony. 

When Cameron tells her she’s her anchor, the match flickers up. That can’t be a coincidence, can it? Maybe the fact that she lied a pretty big lie to Cameron only a few days ago won’t matter, maybe they’ll be okay no matter what, maybe someday she’ll even confess it to Cameron and Cameron will know she was only looking out for her, that everything she does is for her. Maybe it’s meant to be.

And then there’s a schism. What feels like an irreparable one. She never tells Gordon or Diane, or anyone, for that matter, but Cameron walking out of Mutiny for the last time, hand in hand with Tom, of all people, (who is decidedly _not_ Cameron’s soulmate, she’s seen the red whorl on his wrist and she’s spent enough years looking at Cameron’s hands to know hers are only covered in freckles) makes her feel like she’s being torn in two. And then the second schism happens, four years later, when she tries to fix the first one, and she can’t take it. Her body and mind can’t handle it. She recalls years later, staring down too many glasses of Chardonnay, that this all hurt more than labor, more than the divorce, more than she ever thought she could feel. Everything hurts. Creativity hurts, friendships hurt. She gets muscle spasms in her chest.

She begins preferring anonymous encounters in all their forms. Strangers in bed. A new group of hopefuls wanting her venture capital every day. She doesn’t stay on teams, doesn’t take on long term projects. Her assistant, Tanya, is incredible, and the Donna of years ago could consider a friendship there, but no. Not anymore. No one’s going to protect her but herself. 

And then, with no warning, she’s there. Divorced, back in from Tokyo, sleeping on Gordon’s couch. It will change nothing. She is rock solid now, a stronger version of the old Donna who allowed earthquakes to happen, ripping her fault lines to pieces. She doesn’t allow mistakes like that anymore.

But cracks begin to occur. Small moments lead to big ones, like Cameron’s tears in the hospital waiting room while Bos is in limbo. Like her own tears when she finishes _Pilgrim_. Like when she remembers the morning after her DUI where exactly she was planning to go when Pat Benatar came on the radio. Like Haley getting less and less afraid to mention her at the dinner table. Like handing Cameron a contract and seeing something like softness in her eyes. Like Cameron asking if she’s okay. She doesn’t answer.

Gordon is gone. Her Richter scale hits a ten. Through smoke and rubble and acute grief, people she thought she’d lost begin to come back into her life. 

She tells Cameron she misses her. And Cameron stays.

Joe is barefoot one late August night in the backyard, as the three of them sit near the pool with bottles of beer (and a sparkling water for Donna, she’s really going to try this thing for awhile) when Donna notices something she never had before. There’s a patch of neon green on his foot in a very familiar shape. A part of her heart breaks off. She never tells him.

She pretends to be sad when Cameron and Joe part ways. She’s found it within herself to care for Joe now but those two bring out the worst in each other when they attempt romance. It’s all to do with that, of course, their separate well being. Not the match that’s lain dormant but embering Donna’s chest for seven years now, never that. Please, please not that. 

Because Cameron’s leaving again, hitching her Air Stream to her truck and itching to wander. Cameron’s in pain and needs a journey to find creativity, inspiration, love. All things she’s needed to search for herself, so she knows, she understands. She won’t become stone again, but that match will not light, not if she has to douse it permanently.

Laughing harder than she has in months, almost forgetting that Cameron is going, Donna shows Cameron to her bedroom to find some dry clothes. “Things are going to be small on you considering your giantess stature, but I’m sure we can make something work.”

Cameron, who has finally shifted from full mortification to something like mirth, is already stripping out of her soaking overalls. “Hardy-har-har. You’re not that much shorter than me, you know. Slight giantess.”

Still giggling, Donna turns from her dresser, sweater and jeans in hand, to see Cameron tossing her clothes to the side, in nothing but her skivvies. The look on Donna’s face makes Cameron roll her eyes. “I know, an anchor. The most boring mark ever. I didn’t even get a cool abstract one like - shit, Donna, are you okay?”

Donna can’t blink. The muscles aren’t working anymore. Because it’s there. Identical to hers. The truth, without room for denial. Her hand, still clutching the clothes, flies to her own chest. She hears Cameron gasp, understanding. She can’t move. She can’t breathe.

And then in a rush Cameron is hugging her and _laughing_. Donna’s feeling it, feeling every shake of Cameron’s body and it’s almost too much, her knees almost give. She hears Cameron speaking through her laughter, repeating, “We’re idiots, we’re such fucking idiots,” over and over again. The matches catches alight and Donna’s laughing too, throwing her arms around Cameron, pressing her face into her pool-damp skin. 

Cameron still heads east, really just to see her mother, but calls Donna from every truck stop. They can never talk for long, Cameron’s rapidly running out of quarters, but emailing fills up the rest of the words unspoken. They write about everything. They talk about Phoenix. They talk about Gordon, how they wish he could’ve been a part of this with them. They talk about Joe, about the girls (and how hilarious Haley finds all this), about thoughts they’ve both held in for so many years they thought they’d never find a way out. 

Donna sleeps well for the first time in a long, long time, dreaming of Cameron in her Air Stream under the vast desert sky. Whenever she wakes, she presses her palm to the pillow next to her, remembering that first night when they pressed their bodies together, skin to skin, and made so many plans. She knows that within weeks she’ll wake up and Cameron will be there. Her last and best partner. Her anchor. Her lit match, turning into coals, burning deep.


End file.
